Piano Lessons in Kansas City, KS

Instruments: Piano Violin Synthesizer Music Keyboard

What advice do you have about practicing effectively?
Effective practice is focused (and regular!) practice. A daily 30 minutes of focused, non-stressed, comfortable, and pre-planned practice is better than an hour or more of unfocused, anxious, unplanned practice. Even advanced students benefit from this: so many university-level students overpractice with a lack of focus, and while a 10 hour day of practice sounds impressive, it's likely that they would have gotten far more effective work done if they had done 3 to 4 hours that day, in short, focused bursts of time.

Does music run in your family? Tell us a little about your musical family members.
My mother has a degree in music therapy, and my father has been a gigging bass player since college. They chose to homeschool me and my brother specifically so that we could have strong education in the arts and music, which worked out beautifully: I am now a professional musician, and my brother a costume designer. My mother has always had a strong love for music, encouraging my family to have little jam sessions for as long as I can remember, singing songs we all knew and learning new ones. She now even has her own piano studio in Kansas City and teaches full time! My father was mostly self-taught, and went to school for bass performance, but dropped out once he realized what he really wanted to do was play as music as possible. He has an incredible ear and an obsessive love for Jaco Pastorius. Between the two of them, the variety of music genres in our house is truly incredible.

When did you decide to become a professional musician? Was it a gradual decision or was there a defining moment for you?
I have had so many doubts about so many things in my life. I am an anxious person who has been so desperately busy since high school that slowing down is often not an option. But music - that is something that was never a question. It was in my bones, in my heart, there was no option other than music, no thing I felt more sure about, even in the maelstrom of uncertainty that comes with college and adulthood and the unending pressures of life. It is so essential to who I am and how I interact with the world. There was never a clear moment of "oh yes! I am going to be a musician!" It just kept unfolding and growing, drawing me down deeper into it, and I was so enthralled and in love that there was no reason to say no, to try another path. I knew that I would not be happy if I did not do something, anything to do with music on a daily basis. Stumbling into the world of musical theater pit orchestras was truly one of the best things that ever happened to me. That spontaneous decision, spurred by a call from a dear friend who music directed at the Unicorn Theatre in Kansas City who desperately needed a Keyboard 2 player, got me almost all of the professional jobs I have had since then. It is such a joyous, collaborative, fun environment, so much community and ensemble work that I missed from my chamber music days, so much I missed after being alone in a practice room with a piano for four years of my life. These jobs are what have provided me with the reality of existing and working as musician on a daily basis, are what have made extant my soul's deep desire to perform.

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